Twitter to Launch Standalone Music Discovery App Born Out of Recent Acquisition [REPORT]

The app will reportedly be called “Twitter Music” and will be built upon technology from music discovery service We Are Hunted, which was purchased by Twitter within the past six months.

The barebones function of Twitter Music will be discovery. Apparently, the app will recommend music based on signals such as who the user follows on Twitter. The music will be powered by SoundCloud, and if that’s not available the app directs users to an iTunes preview. As of right now, no full streaming services like Spotify are a part of Twitter Music.

Digging deeper, the app consists of a few other tabs. Alongside the suggested music that pulls personalized recommendations based on a user’s Twitter activity, there is also a #NowPlaying tab that will show you tweets from people you follow who tweet using the #NowPlaying hashtag (this is a fun little way to incorporate an old and popular hashtag). We can see this in action, thanks to a tweet from We Are Hunted co-founder Stephen Phillips:

Other tabs include “Popular” and “Emerging” which will give users access to trending and up-and-coming artists and songs, respectively.

According to the report, Twitter suggests that you sign in via Twitter when you open the standalone Twitter Music app, but it’s not required. Of course, personalized recommendations won’t work unless you’re signed in to the Twitter graph.

Back in January, Twitter launched Vine, a six-second video app born out of another acquisition. Although Vine is Twitter’s app and works seamlessly with Twitter, Vine isn’t actually branded with the Twitter name and logo. According to the report, Twitter Music will be a Twitter app through and through.